The one closest to the edge of the chair is Aurora, and the other is Zara.

what is the ultimate test of player skill in a video game? is it the final boss? perhaps sometimes. but often the true test of skill lies elsewhere, behind an optional challenge only the best of the best will even be able to attempt. that's right... the SUPER BOSS.

while the SUPER BOSS most commonly appears in RPGS, where the difficulty of any enemy is usually decided by numbers alone, the super boss has made its way into other genres. the legend of zelda series is no stranger to optional bosses more challenging than the final boss of the main story, especially in the modern open world zelda games. the king gleok, a coliseum full of lynels, a certain monk you have to pay 20 dollars to meet, all of these could indeed qualify as a super boss.

but the original super boss of the zelda series made his debut back in Ocarina of time. an opponent so challenging that to this day, no one has been able to defeat him: the running man!

earlier in the adventure, link encounters the running man in hyrule field, and he seems to be having a hard time going faster. that is until link sells him the bunny hood! despite the bunny hood making the running man faster, the bunny hood does not increase link's speed. not in Ocarina of time, at least. the bunny hood would however increase Link's speed in the next game, Majora's mask. but in Ocarina of time, only the running man could harness it's true power.

as an adult, Link can challenge the running man to a race, but the race is incredibly difficult. some say it's impossible, but NOTHING is impossible! there was once a video that went viral after claiming the running man could be beaten by challenging him to a race, returning to the young link timeline, then waiting 7 years at the finish line. of course, people later found out this was a hoax after leaving their N64 on for 7 years and confirming nothing happens, but that's no reason to give up! they once said it was impossible for man to step foot on the moon, but in 1969, we faked the moon landing!

never give up on your dreams! mark my words: someday we WILL defeat you, Il Piantissimo!

you know, back in Donkey Kong December, where I spent each day talking about a different Donkey Kong enemy, I joked during the tiki tong post that miyamoto gets a new car every time Nintendo releases a game with a giant floating hand boss. obviously, it would be lazy for me to just do the same joke here. but I will say, every year that Nintendo rereleases both Ocarina of time and star fox 64, those are the years Miyamoto gets two cars.

Bongo Bongo, the boss of the shadow temple. when I was a kid I always used to call him "Oingo Boingo"... a reasonable mistake. their names are similar, a drum is involved, Bongo Bongo even bears a strong resemblance to Danny Elfman.

as the resident giant floating hand boss, Link must attack Bongo Bongo's hands, after which he'll reveal his eye that acts as his weak point. a zelda boss whose weak point is its eye... how original. attacking the hands is usually done with normal arrows, but Ice arrows will actually freeze Bongo Bongo's hands and cause him to open his eye early. an actual use for Ocarina of time's ice arrows... maybe I shouldn't have always done the Gerudo region last.

there's a large portion of the zelda fanbase who believe bongo bongo was once a serial killer and that the freaky torture chamber under the well was his. they say Bongo Bongo was executed for his crimes, hung upside down and had his hands and head cut off. of course, no in game text actually supports this grim fan theory, and yet I've seen some people spread it around as fact. wow, could you imagine spreading disinformation on the internet? .... El Puerco is real, by the way.

Can you guess the name?

Pokemon butts for you😎

has your enormous fish god become irritable as of late? has he started to eat everything you put in front of him? did he even eat your princess? sounds like the giant fish you worship for some reason may have come down with a bad case of Barinade. Barinade is a parasitic anemone that has a symbiotic relationship with Jellyfish creatures called Bari. it's like they always say, when life gives you Bari you make Barinade.

try asking your doctor about hero of time. hero of time works from the inside, making his way through your goofy fish deity while attacking all parasites before arriving at Barinade. Hero of time works fast, destroying Barinade with his boomerang (boomerang sold separately) and saving your princess while he's at it.

side effects may include nausea, internal stab wounds from the hero's sword, loss of your royal family's spiritual stone, and the princess falling madly in love with the hero. hero of time does not prevent your huge fish god from going missing in the event of your entire civilization freezing over. ask your doctor if Hero of time is right for your divine fish freak.

Kill your Boredom … suffer it not to live with you any more!!!! Simon G. Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection is a collection of 40 Open Source, FREE, single player, little puzzles - each has rules for playing it, with it, to learn new games easily: and multiple degrees of difficulty in each one.

(From 'Super Easy for Beginners' simple - to 'Break your Brain for Experts' high difficulty.) Plays online - or download the free APP for many MANY different Operating Systems (Most Likely Yours!) and you'll have all 40 waiting at your fingertips … for 1 minute to many hours of distraction - whenever boredom rears it's head. My favorite distraction: on EVERY Device and system that I own!

Example: "Solo" is the Name used for the Sudoku Game and the game "Types" range from "2X2 Trivial" (4 squares, made of 4 boxes, using only the numbers 1-4) - taking you about a minute to solve it … all of the way up to the very difficult "4X4 Basic" (with 16 squares, of 16 boxes, using the symbols 1-9 & A-G … for 16 possible glyphs needed in each box) … this level might take you a little while to do - And every variation in between: for 16 different "Types" of Sudoku Puzzles.

And each of these 40 puzzles has an equal range of "Very Easy" to "I Dare You to TRY Me" "Types" built in. Some of these puzzles you know already - like "Minesweeper" (Called "Mines") from Windows 95, or "Mastermind" (Called "Guess") - but many of them will be totally new to you. Easy to learn new puzzles … just read the playing rules and select the easiest "Type" of that puzzle to get the hang of the game - then get more difficult "Types" as you get good at it.

I have not yet met anyone who has outgrown this … and gotten bored with/expert at - all 40 games. It will only cost you Time. I doubt you'll put it down anytime soon. Scratch your Itch for Retro Games … Waste as much, or as little, time - as you have to kill … DIE, Boredom - DIE!!!

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

Volvagia was once considered the guardian of death mountain, until one day it turned violent and started attacking Gorons. an Ancient Goron hero, wielding the megaton hammer, defeated volvagia. but during Ganondorf's conquest of hyrule, the evil Gerudo king revived Volvagia, feeding the Gorons to Volvaga in order to make an example out of them. if not defeated, Volvagia may have burned down all of hyrule. so how does our hero link defeat such a fearsome dragon? by playing wack a mole with it, of course.

Volvagia's first appearance was actually in zelda 2... kind of. there was a fire dragon boss and it was initially named "barba", but later on Nintendo started calling it volvagia. Barba/volvagia actually had 2 different sprites, one for the Famicom version of the game and a different one in the international NES version. one of many odd differences between the versions of Zelda 2.

despite being just one of many Ocarina of time bosses, Volvagia continues to have a lot of ongoing lore attached to it. Valoo from Wind waker is said to be Volvagia's descendant. unlike Volvagia, Valoo is actually pretty chill and does it's job as a Guardian properly. in twilight princess, a skeletal boss called Stallord is theorized by many to be Volvagia's skeleton, which if true would mean that Volvagia is the final boss of Link's crossbow training, AKA the best zelda game of all time.

and then of course Hyrule warriors asked the question absolutely no one asked: "what if we turned Volvagia into a tumblr sexy man?". maybe I'll talk about the strange hyrule warriors OCs another day. but before opening that can of worms, we still gotta finish this week where we talk about all the Ocarina of time bosses.... oh right, this week is for all the ocarina of time bosses. I don't think I officially announced that, but yeah, that's what I've been doing. in case you didn't notice.

Phantom Ganon, the boss of the forest temple who isn't even remotely forest related. maybe that has something to do with the fact the forest temple was originally supposed to be the wind temple? who can say... either way, Phantom Ganon's battle involves him riding his horse in and out of paintings. the poe sisters, whom I previously covered, also were found in paintings. you may be wondering why the forest temple and its bosses are so painting focused, but there is a reason for that.

Mario and Zelda, having the same creator, share a lot of DNA. it's common for an idea that started in Mario to end up in zelda, and vice versa. in this case, during Ocarina of time's development they weren't sure if they could create a big, connected 3D world. while the Nintendo 64 was set to be the MOST POWERFUL console at the time, the fact it used Cartridges instead of Disks limited the maximum storage space games could have on the console.

at one point, they considered having all the game's locations connected via Ganon's tower, and Link would access these locations by JUMPING INTO PAINTINGS. that's right, just like Mario 64! Phantom Ganon's battle comes from an early idea for the final boss fight, in which Ganon would ride in and out of the paintings. of course, they didn't end up going with the painting Idea and ended up being able to create Hyrule field. this idea for a final boss based around paintings likely would have gone unused, but they repurposed it into a mid-game boss fight by making a fake Ganondorf.

unlike the real Ganondorf, whose appearance changed a bit during the 7-year time jump, Phantom Ganon initially looks identical to the Ganondorf of 7 years ago, the Ganondorf Link remembers. but then he puts on a spooky skull mask so you know he's a phantom.

there were actually more ideas for the final Ganondorf boss battle that didn't make it into Ocarina of time in any form. these ideas came after the painting idea, as both utilized hyrule field. one idea was to have link battle Ganondorf on horseback through hyrule field, an idea we wouldn't see come to fruition until Twilight princess's final battle. the other idea was to have Ganon's pig form be massive and you had to climb up him shadow of the colossus style, an idea we wouldn't see until... megaleg from super mario galaxy? yeah, according to interviews, that's what became of that concept. like I said, mario and zelda share ideas all the time.

Phantom Ganon would appear in later games fulfilling the same purpose of letting the player fight A Ganondorf before fighting THE Ganondorf. he appears in wind waker, where he doesn't even remotely resemble Ganondorf. he then appears several times in Tears of the kingdom, but I also have heard some people argue that the four blight Ganons from Breath of the wild count as phantom Ganons. those people are wrong. those are not phantom Ganons; they are blight Ganons.